Chicopee students to build house from foundation to roof

CHICOPEE - By next fall students from Comprehensive High School are expected to be designing and building a house from the foundation to the roof.

This will be the second home students in the vocational, or career technical education programs, have built in three years. The last house on 820 McKinstry Ave. was completed in the spring of 2012 and sold for about $190,000.

They have also done projects over the summer and during the academic year in schools and City Hall and students in metal fabrication have welded jail cells for the Hampden Sheriff's Department, said Kenneth Widelo, director of career technology.

But when the city took a vacant piece of land on Rolf Avenue because of non-payment of taxes, Widelo jumped at the chance to let students build a second house.

"It's great because it gives the kids a real world learning experience," he told the School Committee recently.

There is also a huge benefit to having the property just outside the gates of the school. Students will be able to walk there and it will allow more teens to get involved with the project, Widelo said.

Carpentry students in the upper grades will take the helm in the project, but plenty of other students will also get involved, he said.

Electrical students, for example, will do all the wiring. Metal fabrication students will create ornamental railings and other things. Drafting students will draw up the blueprints and landscaping students will do all the plantings outside, Widelo said.

But even some of the departments which do not seem related will get involved. Students in the new web design program will document the progress and keep an ongoing web page about the house building and even culinary students will cook the appetizers when the school is ready to hold an open house to show off the new home, Widelo said.

About five years ago the school, with the help of business partners, set up a non-profit corporation that handles all the financial issues such as securing a construction loan to purchase materials and to hire professionals, such as plumbers, to do the work students cannot because there is no program in the school. After the house is sold, the bank loans are paid and any profits are returned to the non-profit to start the next project, he said.

Widelo said he is now working with others to try to secure a contractor to have the foundation dug and poured this summer so students can start construction as soon as they return in September.